Crochet, Garden & the Beginings of a Pantry

How time flies, can you believe we have been in our new home a month now?  I have no idea where those weeks went.  We have unpacked most of our stuff, but as we have a few jobs to do around the place there are still things in the garage, some things I might not have room for or need, this house is a bit smaller, still large
for a semi but it's from the 1950's rather than 1901, so totally different in respect of room size.  On the whole I like it, it's easier to keep clean / do house work and keep warm, but there are some things that I'm not getting on with too well.  I miss my old kitchen and my cooker,  and the bath is small, it's a good job none of us are on the larger side otherwise we would be in danger of getting our backside stuck, lol but that was always on the list to be changed anyway so we just need time.

On the plus side we now have a drive to pull onto instead of fighting for a parking space :-) and the garden is nice, and I have a nice view of it from the kitchen window :-)

Our bedroom is in the process of being decorated, well, I've stripped the wallpaper at least, we decided to have new windows so it may be a few weeks before that can be finished, and this week we have started to give the pantry a make over.  The pantry might seem a strange place to start but I wanted more space for food storage and shelves put in, (there was a very old wall cupboard in there which was absolutely no use at all) so hopefully what we have done will make it a more usable space.

Here's some'Man at work' photos

Pantry in progress

The shelves will be painted white, and you know who will have that job, right? lol

Mark said, 'oh my god when he saw the wall paper :-) I wanted to see something pretty when I opened the door, lets face it, Mark won't go into the pantry that often!

So while Mr Fix It was busy doing his builder thing in the pantry I offered to do the lawns and tidy the garden up.
Usually he is responsible for the mowing and I will take care of the planting (i.e. the harder work, lol) but today I got to play with the 'big boys toys' :-)
I haven't really had a lot of time to spend in the garden, there are lots of different plants and bushes some I have absolutely no idea what they are, others need cutting back and there are probably plants that are yet to show, so I don't want to go digging around and clearing too much until we have seen what comes up, I'm just going to clear / pull up what I know for certain are weeds and deal with anything else next year.

The garden is split into patio then two lawn areas which are separated by a deep boarder, I was concentrating on the second lawn area furthest from the house as this needed some shrubs cutting back and weeding.

Looking better after the tidy up

Looking very green!

This is looking towards the furthest end of the garden from the lawn nearest the house, this boarder needs a major clean-up.

And this is the lawn nearer to the house, with the left hand boarder cleared but again the area to the right needs a good old clear-out.

There is a huge Pieris in the centre of this lawn, well over 5 foot tall, I'm hoping it will be a glorious red when it starts to turn :-)

I tell you, when I got up this morning I was aching in places I didn't know I'd got from all that garden work yesterday! Better than any gym workout :-)

I'm still enjoying crocheting when I can sit down for a while, It's so much easier to pick up and do a bit rather than getting all the equipment out needed to stitch and, looking round at charts I'm  not getting the same feeling as I used too, It's a phase, I know I will stitch again, just not at the moment.

So this is what I've been crocheting:

A blanket for my great Nephew.  He saw a blanket that my sister (his Nan) had done and he asked if he could have one too.  She had just started one for my mum so I said I would start one for him and perhaps Nan would carry on with it.  He's only 5, he must have taken a shine to the bright colours:-)

More bunting made too, this one is for someone who expressed an interest in the last one I made and wanted some for her camper-van and  maybe will want more to sell in her shop.  I've still got to put this one together and attach the pompoms.

Trying out some circles, I have plans for a cushion...eventually

And some new yarn purchased, I love Cath Kidston and was trying to put together something that would resemble CK colours, I would appreciate your opinions on how my choice works, I'm trying to be more colour aware but it's hard, for me anyway.

Do you think it needs white? or any other colour?

I've also been playing around with pompoms and making something that I'm absolutely in love with, it's autumn related so I'm going to keep you in suspense just a little longer :-)

Thank you for visiting my rather long catch-up :-)

Until next time
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